The Enemy of My Enemy
To: #Enlightened_Staff@Antwerp.tu Who’s brilliant idea was it to teleport a friggin giant turtle into my bedroom? My cat is going crazy now. PRELIMINARY REPORT Nicole Taylor ACMR20200167 Waking up in the morning, I was greeted by a giant tortoise turtle? in my bedroom. Quickly reporting to the rest of Enlightened staff, it turned out that Levi, Jane and Salisbury all received some sort of aquatic animal in their respective rooms - respectively a shark, jellyfish, and a school of clownfish (only the latter coming with water; the jellyfish did not survive. happened to the shark?). After a brief inventory, we deduced that no Construct personnel or material was used for the (presumed) teleportation of the animals, pointing to an external source. Agent Jane set out to discover the origins, while I went out to inspect and re-engage the teleportation inhibitors (which were, indeed, breached). The source of the animals was quickly located to be our neighbour, Aquatopia. The source of the teleportation was also quickly identified as a group of three traditionalist reality deviants; one a likely Son of Ether (female) still called that, right?, one Virtual Adept and one Dreamspeaker (first two likely, second presumed). There was some panic in the museum, and a Black Suit team was dispatched to evacuate and contain the situation (under the guise of a hallucination-inducing gas leak). One of the deviants was quickly recognised, the Son of Ether named Yanaika de Jongh, 38 years old. Her previous known location was Mexico, but she was known to be in Antwerp 20 years ago, where an altercation with Lemaire caused her to stop visually aging (appearing as 18). As the deviants were staying put, and didn’t use the opportunity they had to do serious harm, we figured their likely plan was to get our attention rather than a direct attack, so we set out to meet them (with proper precautions in place. Arriving in the building, we were greeted by staff who informed us that it was not the correct time to visit; while agent Jane was trying to persuade her, Salisbury decided to sidestep the issue by knocking her out. We then set off to find a quicker way to the deviants - they were near the end of the regular route through the building. Salisbury quickly found a room with “solid” water. First expecting a simple Matter effect in place, he proceeded to slowly revert the water back to a normal state. Meanwhile, I proceeded to investigate and re-establish the Dimensional Barrier, which the deviants had weakened with their procedures. This reduced some of the effects present in the area. I also set about to lockdown local space and the barrier, to prevent any further enemy teleportations from occurring. Jane tapped into the local camera system, and got a clearer view of the deviants - now two, as the Dreamspeaker was missing. The Virtual Adept, Tim van de Wiel, seemed to be noticing our influence, especially after Jane and Salisbury started accessing his portable computer strange design. After a short while Salisbury found a man frozen in the water, which caused us to reassess our situation - a quick analysis by Jane showed that there wasn’t a Matter effect, but a Time effect active in the area. The man was frozen along with the water. Jane quickly tried to reverse the effect - but somehow ended up strengthening it, to the annoyance of Salisbury (who now had a much harder job) and the apparent glee of the deviants, who proceeded to heckle Jane over the intercom. Agent Jane decided to use her mistake, later even claiming it was made on purpose, to delude the deviants into underestimating the team. Quickly blocking their access to the camera feed, we figured that as long as time was frozen, the man was fine - we’d have to get him out later (which would take a few hours now). With the quick way blocked, and with blatant procedures deemed too dangerous to the consensus except in emergencies due to the location, we went the long way around. The first few rooms went by without issue - the rainforest room having returned to normal with the Dimensional Barrier raised back up - but soon we heard a strange, loud purring sound. This turned out to be a big cat - a tiger, to be exact. Remote scans turned up a human mind in the cat, likely the missing Dreamspeaker. After taking precautions (suiting up for Salisbury, localised spatial misdirection on mine) the two of us went in, with Jane hanging back, tapped into the sound system. The precautions turned out to be a good idea, as we were pounced by a tiger once we headed in. Salisbury quickly knocked him back with an audio pulse ask about ringing in ears; Jane, never even entering the room, used a brain wave generator to pacify the tiger. It sat down. As such procedures are often unstable in field conditions, Salisbury used his solidifying foam did he call that? to properly secure the hostile. (Edit by dr.Jane: Why did you go into a room when the threat could be neutralised through the wall without even damaging the wall?) The Dreamspeaker came over as very hostile, accusing us of disturbing the balance of nature and destroying vital spirits of nature - the typical rabble they tend to spout. It turns out that he had a particular hatred against our construct due to earlier missions in alternate dimensions, during which in his deluded world-view killed some elemental part of nature to the mission in TS version. Jane did extract some vital intelligence on the rest of the building, but in-depth extraction would have to be done in-house, so AST-3 was called in to recover the encased tiger for later processing. The next room, as we learned, was dangerous for various reasons. For starters, a vulgar Space procedure had stacked it with the room after it, which not only produced dangerous terrain, but also meant it was filled with dangerous animals. Jane managed to pinpoint them, charting a route through them - except for the opening to the next room, which was filled with snakes. Specifically, snakes arranged in the shape of a latticework *over* the opening, preventing passage. Thinking quickly, Salisbury deduced that, if the snakes were fused together in a latticework, he could just pick them up as a whole (protected by his suit from bites) and throw it to the sides. He did so, which worked well, until we found out that wasn’t all that the snakes would do - they were fusing together into some sort of vulgar monster. As the exit was contained, we decided to postpone dealing with that problem by running through the door and blocking it. After informing AST-3 to avoid the next room, we went ahead. The next room was defaced by (presumably) the Dreamspeaker as some sort of misguided protest against modern technology, but provided no hazard. The accessway up did, with several enhanced Men-o-War The big jellyfish hanging down their tentacles over the escalators. Salisbury quickly dealt with that by evaporating the tentacles. Finally arriving at the cafeteria where the remaining deviants were holed up, we were met by a railgun aimed at the walls of the room - the entrance being through an underwater glass tunnel. Thus in a stand-off, we proceeded to negotiate. As it turned out, all three had their own reasons for going after our construct. The Dreamspeaker, as mentioned, had a delusion about us being responsible for upsetting nature. De Jongh, the Son of Ether, wanted revenge against Lemaire; she became more pliable once we convinced her he was no longer with the Union. Vd Wielen, meanwhile, wanted to prove himself to his peers by “pwning” one of the big players in the TU - which, apparently, means us. As no permanent damage was caused, we decided to negotiate with the two remaining deviants (with the Dreamspeaker in custody); in exchange for information on how they breached our security and gathered intel, we would help de Jongh to reverse Lemaitre’s blatant procedure, and gave vd Wielen the “cred” he craved. Dr Jane set up his 15 minutes of fame by setting up some video's that would go viral. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR REALITY DEVIANT FOLLOWUP Yanaika de Jongh seemed easy enough to work with, and may be a candidate for further recruitment. Playing up our falling out with her main enemy can be a viable card - but considering the timeline, a dangerous one (Lemaitre was an agent for a full 15 years after the procedure, after all). Solving the problem itself after all this time will probably buy us enough goodwill to keep in productive contact. Tim vd Wielen is a more volatile asset, but one that could be steered towards other enemies with careful intervention. As for the Dreamspeaker (name unknown), he seems too dangerous and radical to be allowed to return to society without major processing. Recommend recruitment in Atlas program. Okt 1, addition by dr. Jane: subject pre-prepared for Atlas program and transferred to the program. Purely for the records: His name was Sioun the Wendigo. FURTHER RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BETTER MORALE The tortoise has been relocated to an aquatic zoo in Florida. He has been renamed Donatello. Having a fancy dish like sharkfinsoup in the canteen does improve morale. For a limited time only. Category:Season 3